Oldies are rather goodies

I'm so far having much better luck with dead novelists than I am with active ones. Here's the recent rundown, from deadest to least dead:

Nabokov: Pale Fire was a terrific read. I read Lolita years ago and have occasionally struggled, always unsuccessfully, with Ada for probably a decade. I'd fogotten what pure pleasure Nabokov's easy, confident prose can be, mired as I became in the tiresomely continuous efforts at brilliance in Ada. Pale Fire was authentically funny and ingenious and created a remarkable character in Kinbote. I'm now thoroughly enjoying Pnin, which is even less pretentious.

Bellow: Humboldt's Gift was a combination of a book I thoroughly enjoyed and a book I found a thorough chore. The one was a story of people and relationships (Heliogabulus likee that). The other was thoroughly unconvincing, tedious ruminations on metaphysical BS (Helio no likee). Where the two met, I found myself waiting impatiently for the characters who made fun of anthroposophy to be proved right. But no, the reader is apparently supposed to take this nonsense seriously, even to be moved by it. That's way beyond the powers of my imagination.

That said, Bellow's prose is absolutely wonderful. I had great pleasure (more, in fact) in reading Bellow's essays (in a volume called, I believe, It All Adds Up). Fascinating too, as a writer, to see how many of the minor characters and minor opinions in the novels can be found in the essays as people Bellow met and thoughts he thunk. I knew his novels were very autobiographical in their story lines, but seeing the same oddball people in his essay "reality" and his novel fantasy gave me a compelling sense of occupying the mind of the man.

Julian Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot was fun and inspired me, as I'm sure it did many, to read more Flaubert. I've started on the letters, which some rightly call his masterpiece. I also started Salammbo, but its lack of realistic characters put it a bit beyond my attention span. As for FP, I thought the "novel" element was forced in, as if JB himself was embarassed by his obsessive interest in Flaubert and had to put it on a fictional character. Otherwise, a quick and enjoyable read.